JEAN M. CASWELL
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MANUSCRIPT OF THE COUSTUME DE NORM EN DIE
(Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, Law Library Ms. N 6)
The Library of Congress Coutume Collection includes an intriguing manuscript copy of the Coustume de Normendie (x). It is an illustrated copy of the Grand coutumier de Normandie (2), a private compilation of Norman law which, though unofficial, carried great authority the province (3). The text is embellished with elegant flourish initials and line endings, painted initials, and seven handsomely bordered miniatures. The manuscript's physical is regular. Gatherings are in quires of eight, with only two exceptions : at the of parts I and II of the Grand coutumier and at the end of the text. A single scribe seems to have written the entire manuscript (4), and the miniatures all appear to be by one artist. When considered with the richness of decoration and the inclusion of a love knot in one (on the thigh of an attendant in the Homage scene on f. 27r), the regularity and care shown in the production suggest that this manuscript was not simply a workshop copy of the Norman coutume, but a commissioned copy.
The Miniatures
Seven miniatures head the seven divisions in the Coustume de Normendie manuscript. Oddly, the text illustrated in a miniature does not consistently appear in the section following that miniature. However, the miniatures do illustrate, quite literally, passages chosen from the Coustume text.
The Coustume artist almost certainly relied on model books and panel paintings for groupings, and motifs (5), and drew from both secular and religious sources for his icono-
(1) The manuscript, held in the European Division of the Law Library as Ms. N 6, is described in item number 263 of Jean Caswell and Ivan Sipkov, The Coutumes of France in the Library of Congress, An Annotated Washington, D.C., Libr. of Congress, 1977. AH seven miniatures are reproduced in full color in this volume.
(2) The Library of Congress manuscript is a complete version of the Grand coutumier, as distinguished from the earlier Très-ancien coutumier. It contains both of the two usual prologues, a Table of Contents, Part I and Part II of the Grand coutumier, La iustice as barons, the Charte aux Normands of 19 March 1314/15, and an untitled list which, in the 1483 incunabulum, is called La taxacion de drois.
(3) The Grand coutumier was the second compilation of Norman law, the Summa de legibus in curia laicali, which was composed in the diocese of Coutances by a member of the Maucael family between 1254 and 1258. (Ernest-Joseph Tardif, Les auteurs présumés du grand coutumier de Normandie, Paris, 1885, p. 49 and 54. Ernest- Joseph Tardif, Coutumiers de Normandie ; textes critiques, tome II, La summa de legibus Normannie in curia laicali, Rouen, Paris, 1896, p. cxciv). — The basic work on the coutumiers of Normandy was done by Tardif, and published in three volumes between 1881 and 1903. Ernest- Joseph ^Tardif, Coutumiers de ; textes critiques (Rouen, Paris).
(4) Although the script is regular, the spelling is often irregular, e.g. f. 65V : guarde and garde ; f. 81r : longour and langour ; f. 128V : fames and femes.
(5) More information about the use of models in medieval manuscripts can be found in : R. W. Scheli/er, A Survey of Medieval Model Books (Haarlem : De Erven F. Bohn, N.V., 1963) especially p. 3 and 9 ; James Douglas Farquhar, Creation and Imitation, The Work of a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Illuminator (Fort Lauderdale, Florida, 1976) especially p. 61-69.
84
